Art On Istanbul hosts a thematic group exhibition titled “Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?” from the 15th of July until the 12th of September, 2014.

This thematic exhibition, as can be understood from its title, showcases a selection of both early and recent works of each invited artists. When artistic production is considered as a continuity, it is natural to see common features, overlapping themes and similar styles in between every creative artist’s starting point and the artistic stance s/he adopts in current times. These common grounds save the creative artistic production from becoming an ordinary repetition and place it at the center of creative and narrative trials. The title and the conceptual framework of the exhibition have been developed from İlhan Berk’s book of poetry “Atlas” (Book of Maps, first published in 1976).

One of the outstanding representatives of modern Turkish poetry, İlhan Berk, along with his chief activity, produced lots of paintings, drawings and scratches. His “poetics”, which he built up together with his poems and paintings, was based on the continuity of artistic production. This indicates the existence of a structure that accelerates the concepts of “beginning” and “continuity”.

On the whole, the exhibition “Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?” brings together former and recent works of each artists and leaves the door open for viewers to comprehend the differentiation in the “continuity of production”.